Is this a good gaming PC?

1000FPSDec 14, 2010, 7:55 PM

Hello everyone. It wasnt long ago since I last did a major computer upgrade, but I've managed to somehow cough up a bit of spare money So I am about to order these parts, but I wanted to double and ask you guys what you think. Tell me if you think I should swap one of the components for something different/better.

GPU: I'd consider a single 5870 instead (or a single 5970). You'd get high enough performance right now (the 5870 can max out any game at 1080p resolutions), and leave yourself room to upgrade. I'm not a huge fan of the 6xxx series, as they're kind of weak for the extra money.

PSU: If you didn't already have the Thermaltake, I'd recommend a 750W-850W unit from Corsair, Antec, SeaSonic, Silverstone or XFX. They've got higher quality units. The higher wattage would be useful to support the higher end GPU I'm recommending.

I've actually already got a 955, but its the C2 revision, and I cant get it past 3.6GHz. Also, have you seen the 6850 crossfire reviews? They're excellent, two 6850s are on par with one 5970, they scale very well, use less power, heat and cost less. So I'm pretty much decided with two 6850s. Although thermaltake arent the most popular brand of PSU, they're still very good, and 650w is more than capable of powering the system. But yeah, I might go with RAM that has lower timings.

The benefit of the 5970 is that you can overclock it a lot higher than a Crossfire setup. The 5970 at stock is two 5850s, but it's actually dual 5870s. You've got a lot of extra headroom there. In addition, if you go the Crossfire route, you've eliminated an upgrade path. If you get a 5970, not only will you get amazing performance right now, and you'd still have the ability to drop in the second one later and extend the life of the build by a good number of years.

Also, not every game will support Crossfire, so for some games you may be limited to using a single one of the fancy cards you've bought. Your performance will drag to a halt in those games.

The benefit of the 5970 is that you can overclock it a lot higher than a Crossfire setup. The 5970 at stock is two 5850s, but it's actually dual 5870s. You've got a lot of extra headroom there. In addition, if you go the Crossfire route, you've eliminated an upgrade path. If you get a 5970, not only will you get amazing performance right now, and you'd still have the ability to drop in the second one later and extend the life of the build by a good number of years.

Also, not every game will support Crossfire, so for some games you may be limited to using a single one of the fancy cards you've bought. Your performance will drag to a halt in those games.

The 5970 does use crossfire, it just doesnt use two PCI-E slots. In a game that doesnt support crossfire, the 5970 will do badly as well. And I can always just sell my two 6850s if I wanted to upgrade.

The 5970 does use crossfire, it just doesnt use two PCI-E slots. In a game that doesnt support crossfire, the 5970 will do badly as well. And I can always just sell my two 6850s if I wanted to upgrade.

No it doesn't. Conceptually, yes, but not in practice. The 5970 isn't going to become half of what it is in games that don't support Crossfire.

It's also completely worthless to say "I can just sell XXX". You can do that with anything. The point here isn't to NEED to sell stuff to get the performance you want, it's to buy the performance to start with. Also, no one knows what the value of any piece of technology is going to be at any point down the road.

When you decide get a second and put it in crossfire it's the second best xfire/sli setup available, barely being beaten by sli GTX 580's. It will also cost a heck of a lot cheaper too, and use less power.

@amk09: I'm failing to see how the 6970 at $370 is a better idea. Yes, once you Crossfire it, it's more powerful than the 5970 (barely), but it'd also cost $270 more. Why wouldn't you just spend the extra $100 over the 6870 and get the 5970?

Sorry guys, but no amount of convincing is going to stop me from getting two 6850s My CPU is probably not good enough for anything better than two 6850s, so when I next upgrade, I might as well replace the whole system